The Human Nature of Fighter and Victim

August 1, 2024

TRANSCRIPT

It's always amazing to me how a little bit of new awareness or just a little intention. It's it's almost like learning some of the distinctions is like just taking someone's gaze and just Oh my god. Altering it. And now you can make choices about it because you can't make choices about things that you don't know exist. Right? Not looking at it.

If you can't see it, you can't change it. So being more aware that maybe there's something about this situation that I'm not seeing rather than constantly blaming them or something outside of myself where I really have no impact, no control. It's not obvious always to us that the answer could be so in in front of us.

Yeah. And you're you just made me realize something. So some people seem to be saying they're wrong.

I'm right. And then I just realized it manifests the same way when when you say, I'm wrong. They're right. You're in the same exact loop.

So it's not just people who say it's everyone else's fault. It's also people who say, it's all my fault. It's all my fault. Right?

Like, they're doing the same exact thing.

It's not only in our thoughts. It's in our body. So we get used to being the fighter, you know, being the one that's always right and everybody else is wrong and always done to and or we can equally get into that posture of I'm bad, it's all my fault, The martyr.

Right. Both of those are kind of almost like a habit, a way of being that then gives you the world that you get when you're in that posture. So if you're a fighter, you have lots of fights. And if you're a victim, you have lots of people laying stuff on you. You know, it just goes with the territory, and then it looks like, well, that's reality. Some of the patterns that we are living now probably got created started to get created even before we had language in the way that we can fully understand, like, why are we doing this? You know, what happens from trauma and what happens from different stress reactions that we have as adults.

Why should leaders be interested in trauma? When you're leading, you you know, there's a lot there's high stakes. And when there's high stakes and you're representing possibilities for people or big projects for people, if you don't understand your own reactions and the way in which you react to stress and to pressure, you will react from a trauma state and potentially traumatize your staff, which lots of people have been traumatized at work, unnecessarily blamed, harshly spoken to, put in a corner, and they can't get out. Things that people do at work that are human. Leaders need to be aware of them. So not only for themselves, but for what's going on in the team dynamic as well.

Wow. When you said that, I thought of teachers that did that to me too. So it's like it's something that happens, and teachers are leaders. So there you go. It's not just corporate leaders. It's and anyone who is leading in any manner. Coaches?

Yep. Parents? I mean yeah. Parents, other parents. Yeah. Neighbors.

There's so much that can can be done to repair and to grow from these experiences. And first and foremost, stopping pointing at everyone else and just getting responsible for your own. Yeah. Yeah. Which I love that that the program focuses on what you can control and just you look on your side of the street. And it's not never look at other people and don't consider what they're doing, but, like, this is where we have agency.

Yes.

It doesn't mean that you're not calling people out. It doesn't mean that you're not addressing Right. Issues. You're not, like, sitting in your corner naval gazing.

It's much it you know, it's about yeah. Where can I impact my own self? We talk about transformation as being relational, that you're not transforming the circumstances when you cannot transform other people. You can't transform the circumstances.

There's so many circumstances in the world right now, in organizations.

We're dealing with enormous change.

And where we can transform is in our relationship to those things. And then, you know, the the thought would be how can I look at this differently? I mean, this is where working with coaches is can be really valuable is if a coach can help you look at that, look at that person, or look at that situation differently, then it it's a there's an there's a natural opening that occurs. And I believe good coaching, you know, creates those kinda openings much less than gives advice. Has the person see there's a different way of looking at something?

Yeah. And then the the so there's action that comes out. It's but it's the action arises out of that new way of looking at something. Then that's my action, not something I was told to do.